Tag Archives: Minecraft

A) Can I just rant about the spam comments on WordPress? Double digits! Every day! Spambots, relax, I know you are fake, please leave me alone.

B) Just a quick post today because I actually have some huge deadlines at work looming (hence the lack of post on Friday) but my co-worker and I were just chit chatting about Minecraft and he told me this story and it warmed my heart so I thought I’d share.

My co-worker is married, has one little baby, thoroughly enjoys video games but doesn’t have a ton of down time and would love to play games with his wife rather than spend their precious time together, separated. I’ve met his wife a few times and she seems like a wonderful woman. That is further supported by the occasional story he’ll come in with, like “We bought a random trivia game on Xbox Live last night and she played with me for awhile; she liked it all right! We had a good time.” Small spouse gaming victories like that are always heartwarming to me because I’ve always seen gaming as something that brings me closer to people (my brother, new friends, internet strangers who become friends, cashiers at fast food restaurants [true story]) so when I hear tales of the opposite variety, “My wife/husband plays Skyrim nonstop and I hate video games!” I get sad.

This morning my co-worker stumbled in, told us how he had been sick all weekend, and had told his wife Sunday would have to be a lazy, in-bed kind of day because he felt so terrible. So he started trying the Minecraft demo, having never played extensively before, and so did she, to keep him company. Sure enough, she fell in love with the game, as did he. Of course they bought it.

I laughed at his funny explanations of their botched attempts to build and farm and do other things in their first bout of playing the game. He told us about a sheep that wandered into their home that they couldn’t get rid of so eventually he proposed harvesting it for food, to which his wife exclaimed, “NO! You can’t kill Lamby!” I followed up all of this with the comment, “Well that is awesome that you guys can enjoy that together” to which he said “Yeah, that really is the best part.” D’awwwwww!

Hit me with your sappy, togetherness stories that gaming facilitated! I love to read ’em, I want to read ’em, and I want to celebrate what gaming can create, not what it can break when applied incorrectly.

Here’s the thing: I’d love to write about the great games I played at PAX, but I’m too busy implementing the awesome knowledgeI got at PAX. For example, I’ve applied to about a billion jobs tonight. That may or may not be hyperbole. The point is, I didn’t review games like I was supposed to tonight because I’m trying to do what all the geniuses at PAX panels told me to do. Here’s what they told me, that I am now going to share with you all:

Started out the weekend with Destructoid

First I went to the Destructoid panel on Friday morning. I had zero idea of what to expect, but things started off on the right foot when a Destructoid employee randomly handed me a Razer Taipan mouse. Sweet! I’m now an insta-fan. The biggest piece of advice I got was to post like crazy on sites internal blogging systems. For example, I blogged a lot on that IGN system when I was trying to get to E3, but apparently I shouldn’t have stopped. Sites that have internal bloggers like to hire from that pool. I didn’t get a chance to ask if they wanted original content or if it didn’t matter, but because I’ve already invested money and time into this blog, I’m going to double post from here to IGN to Destructoid to BitMob, to any other place I can find.

I went to what was called the PC Gamer Mega Panel as well that had Notch, Dean Hall, Sean Vanaman, a guy I should know who is a big wig with that new XCOM game coming out, and another guy I should REALLY know because he was big time involved with Bastion at SuperGiant games. Man, ultimate fail with names right now. Anyway, it was mainly just fascinating to hear these guys talk about storytelling in video games (the subject of the panel), primarily because they had two true developer-created stories in The Walking Dead and Bastion, and XCOM to a certain extent, but then it was juxtaposed against the player-created worlds of DayZ and Minecraft. Just really incredible to listen to and contemplate. Put that in your brain basket and chew on it for awhile. Leave comments with awesome insights. One great insight in my notes that I wrote down was “Create real loss in games,” ala DayZ. Another post with more thoughts on this forthcoming.

Friday night I got the best advice of my life from Chris Kohler, from Wired. I asked the panel if I should give up my writing job because it wasn’t in video games, or keep it because it was writing, and the advice didn’t exactly match my question. But one of the panelists mentioned that her fiance just happened to be a gaming journalist and I could talk to him afterwards, and of course I did that. So I got to ask him my question and he said “Well if you really don’t care where you end up, script writing or journalism [which I don’t] then you should just get into the industry by any means then work your way towards writing.” BOOM. DONE, CHRIS KOHLER. Finally a definite answer to something I’ve been puzzling over for months now. So, I’ve been applying to all kinds of jobs tonight. Mainly SEO, writing, and PR stuff, things that I think I would still enjoy doing if I were actually hired and have a minute amount of experience in, but man . . . very time consuming. Also, it should be noted that that is not an absolute direct quote from Chris Kohler. That was the gist of what he said to me, personally. I don’t want to get in trouble with Chris Kohler for a misquote or something. Chris Kohler.

Good day if I start with Destructoid and end with Wired.

Saturday’s panels were less helpful to me, but somethings that might help you:

These are great tools to use to start actually making games with little to no programming knowledge: Construct 2, Game Salad, Game Maker, Unity. Even though the panelists of the “Breaking into the Industry” panel weren’t writers, many of them started making games on their own to then work their way into a company and to get where they wanted.

The number one advice in the “How Not to Write a Game Review” panel was to be specific and to not use cliches. For example, don’t say something was good or bad, but make sure you mention specifics and if you reference a past game or different game in comparison, you gotta explain that to. THIS was the panel that I got Evan Lahti’s card from PCGamer.com. BOOM. Small victory.

Long. Lots of text. Nothing to funny or exciting. But I know the majority of anyone reading this blog post is someone who like me is blogging for fun and trying to get somewhere. So I thought maybe I could let you benefit from my experiences. To close, I’ll share the inspiring story from Niero Gonzalez, founder of Destructoid, that I hadn’t heard before.

He started a a gaming blog all on his own. He would get up early to schedule blog posts about gaming news throughout his day while he was at his day job, he would then sneak onto his blog to post and write during his day job, and then he would stay up late to write more content to auto-post the next day while he was at work. In his first year, he published 2,000 blog posts. And when he saw PAX was coming up, he called to see how he could get there with a media badge and they said all he had to do was show them his professional website. So with his minimal knowledge of web design, he made his site look as professional as he could, PAX bought it, and he got a media badge to go cover his first PAX. He posted mostly humor, and just about anything he could find in his first year, and that’s how he started his following.

It was kind of intimidating to hear that story, to be honest, but I also found it inspiring. He did it, guys. We can too. It’ll be really hard, but we can. I don’t think that’s naivete, I think it’s hope and hard work. My goal, for the record here, so I can be held accountable to strangers on the internet, is to make it to PAX with a difference badge next year, whether as an exhibitor because I helped write and develop a game or as a media representative because I’m writing for an outlet, or my own blog that I tricked them into thinking was real. I’m not sure how, at the moment, but next year I’m going to PAX as more than an attendee. And you can too!

Noob Alert! I originally said I watched Team Digitas as one of the first teams to play in the LoL championship. That should read Team Dignitas. My mistake, and if you like LoL and haven’t given up on me yet, sorry for the typo.

1) On Thursday night we pulled into Seattle to meet up with my friends’ Minecraft server buddies for dinner. They turned out to be a twenty-five year old woman who was the community manager and a man in his late thirties with his nine year old son. All three were so incredibly nice and so passionate about Minecraft that even though I didn’t really know what was going on (I have still never played Minecraft, and I know that makes me a bad person), I was grinning like a kid as the table bantered about Minecraft then Magic then tabletop games. After the meal, the father invited us all to play Risk in the lobby of his hotel with other people. After wandering the convention center for awhile to just check everything out before the influx of people the next morning, we wandered into one of the hotel lobbies and I saw every table and chair occupied by fellow gamers playing all kinds of board games and card games. I started smiling like a kid and when I tried to explain it later to family and friends, I got choked up. People all together for the same purpose doing the same thing. Incredible.

It’s worth noting that while wandering around the convention center Thursday night, I saw a troupe of Mass Effect cosplayers who were perfect. In particular there was a guy dressed in the best geth suit I’ve ever seen. He proceeded to moonwalk in his suit as people were taking pictures of him and then I knew: my life was complete.

2) We got up early to get in line by eight for getting into the exhibition hall as soon as the doors opened at ten. After seeing some amazing cosplay that kept a smile on my face for two hours, the doors officially opened and I wandered the floor in a crowd of people, playing a few games (Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs) here and there, but mainly feeling a little overwhelmed, and not wanting to wait in line for any demos. Eventually I wound up on the sixth floor and watching the North American regionals for League of Legends. I’ve played the game a few times, I’m really bad at it, and I know there is strategy but I’m not sure what it is. However, I knew the tournament was a huge deal this weekend so I wanted to at least see a little bit of it. And as the teams started the game and Team Dynamic drew first blood and Team Dignitas got revenge a few minutes later, I felt my involvement and excitement rising. Despite not knowing how these players were great I could tell they were great, and the energy in the room was almost palpable. That was the moment I realized PAX was so much bigger than I fathomed initially and I was a part of it and my life is awesome because of that.

3) I was waiting in line for the Destructoid panel as a Fallout cosplaying couple behind me were talking to a few people behind them. I then heard the boyfriend say that his girlfriend got some great swag earlier that morning, and the girlfriend promptly burst into tears. Unable to abate my curiosity, I turned around to see her show off a sparkling (and quite massive) engagement ring to the interested parties. My joy for them (and I’m sure the joy of everyone else in the line) was overwhelming and it struck me how gamer or non-gamer, we’re all so much the same. Beautiful things happen at PAX.

4) There are a few remote locations for panels and events outside of the convention center itself, within a few blocks of it to the north and west. As I walked from one hotel meeting room to another for the next writing panel I was attending, I realized the sun was shining and I was walking around sans jacket. I looked up in the cloudless sky and noted its absolutely perfect shade of cerulean blue. I was at a gaming convention where beautiful things happened like moon walking geth, cosplay marriage proposals, getting career advice from Chris Kohler of Wired, telling Evan Lahti of PCGamer.com that I would send him writing samples, and too many other great things to mention. The location was also beautiful. It has been an unbeatable weekend.

So far I’ve received incredible writing and career advice, I’ve laughed a lot, I’ve played some games (not nearly enough), I bought Containment for $3, and I’ve made a long list of blog topics that I should be posting faster than I’ll be able to. My brain and notebook are at full capacity with more topics I want to write about and more topics I want to get back to the convention center to cover as quickly as possible tomorrow morning for the final day of the expo. PAX has been phenomenal, more posts are coming, and thanks for sticking around.